Jeremiah 7:11 “Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the LORD.”
When you go to building or a business somewhere, usually that building has a specific thing that it sells or provides a service for. A grocery store sells mostly food and kitchen type tools, a lumberyard sells wood and tools to be used in construction, a mechanic shop repairs motors, and so on. They each have their own “speciality” that they do.
What would you think then, if one day you walked into a grocery store and right next to a platter full of fresh cheese there was a few bottles of antifreeze, some pails of paint, and maybe a few packages of fresh fishing bait? Wouldn’t that seem kind of disgusting and out of place? That store was built for the selling of food, not those other things.
The church has it’s own purpose as well, and that purpose is a place to come to serve and honor the Lord. It is a place of prayer, yet some people have turned it into a place to make money, as is what happened in Matthew 21.
Matthew 21:12-13 “And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”
Money in itself is just paper, gold, silver, etc, but it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. It is the desire to gain and amass wealth that will cause a person to do extreme things, things that they shouldn’t be doing, as we saw with Judas. His love for money caused him to betray the Lord. Instead of loving Christ, Judas loved money.
The church is a place to come and worship and pray to the Lord, not gold and silver. When people gather together to church, it should be because of their love for God, but some people have used this gathering together as a way to make money.
Can you imagine how upset our Lord would be if He walked into some of today’s churches? “Gift” shops filled to overflowing with knickknacks and trinkets, even selling a seat in the church to come and listen to God’s word. Go sell your things elsewhere. Go and make your money at a different location. The church isn’t a marketplace to be used to buy and sell wares. It isn’t a place to sell your cookies and cakes. It is a house of prayer.
Have you noticed how nice and quiet it is in a movie theater as everyone is quietly watching the film, until someone starts to talk loudly in their cell phone, ruining the concentration of everyone in the theater? That is rather an annoying occurrence that shouldn’t happen. Take your phone outside, or turn it off until later.
God’s house is His house. It is to be used to worship and praise His name. Go sell your things anywhere else, but don’t do it in His house.
In Christ
Andrew
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 